A2. Custom Focus Group
A complete guide to understanding and running a Custom Focus Group on consumr.ai
What Is a Custom Focus Group?
Custom Focus Group is the most flexible full-length format within the Focus Groups study family. It is designed for research questions that do not fit a standard template, such as a specific behavioral hypothesis, campaign question, positioning challenge, or audience decision pattern.
The format supports 2 to 8 full AI Twins and typically runs for 15 to 20 minutes. The team selects the moderator role, chooses the probing style, writes the objective, reviews the generated questions, and selects the cohort.
The report is written-conclusion-first. It provides a concise headline finding, a deeper thematic analysis, strategic recommendations, individual responses, and citation traces back to the original language.
Who Needs a Custom Focus Group?
Custom Focus Groups are useful for researchers, brand teams, product teams, and strategists whose question requires more control than a pre-built template allows.
Choose this format when the team needs to control the lens of the discussion. A behavioral role may focus on motivations and biases, a pattern-oriented role may search for recurring connections, and a design-oriented role may focus on needs, tensions, and possible solutions.
Why Custom Focus Groups Matter
Bespoke qualitative research often provides the right level of control but takes too long to scope, recruit, moderate, and analyze for fast-moving decisions. Template-based research is faster, but the framework may not match the question.
Custom Focus Group combines a user-defined objective and configurable moderator lens with a structured report. This allows a specific question to receive a deeper qualitative read without forcing it into a research shape it was not designed for.
How the AI Twins Work
Participants are full AI Twins. The selected cohort determines whose reasoning appears in the conclusion, themes, recommendations, and verbatim responses.
A single participant can provide a focused read on one audience perspective. A larger cohort can reveal where several audience perspectives agree or differ. Select participants based on the audience the decision is intended to serve.
AI Driven meeting style routes questions and follow-ups adaptively. Exhaustive asks every question to every selected participant and takes longer. Use AI Driven for most exploratory work and Exhaustive when full question coverage matters.
What a Custom Focus Group Produces
The Conclusion states the dominant finding in plain language. See detailed analysis breaks that finding into named themes and explains the reasoning behind each one. Strategic Recommendations translate the themes into practical directions. Response by Individuals preserves the question-by-question source material, and Trace Results shows how specific phrases support the synthesis.
Walkthrough of How to Interpret a Custom Focus Group Report
Read the report from synthesis back to evidence. Begin with the Conclusion, use the detailed analysis to understand the structure of the finding, review the recommendations to see how the analysis translates into action, and finish with the individual responses and citation traces to verify the source.
What a Custom Focus Group Will Not Tell You
Custom Focus Group does not produce the Word Cloud, Empathy Map, SWOT, or timeline stack available in Standard Focus Group. Use Standard when the deliverable needs those visual modules.
The report also does not estimate how common a finding is across the broader market. Use Quant research when the next question is prevalence, segment size, or expected market response.
How Custom Differs from Other Focus Group Formats
Custom vs Standard
Standard begins with a pre-built objective and question set and produces a visualization-heavy report. Custom begins with a user-defined objective, configurable role, and editable generated questions. Choose Custom when the research question or analytical lens does not fit a template.
Custom vs Quick
Quick Focus Group is designed for a narrow directional answer in a shorter session. Custom takes longer and provides a deeper written analysis, recommendations, full responses, and traceability. Choose Custom when the question deserves a more developed explanation.
Limitations
Objective quality drives question quality. A vague objective produces a vague discussion guide.
Role selection shapes the result.Choose the moderator lens deliberately.
Custom does not provide the native visualization stack available in Standard.
The findings reflect the selected AI Twins and should not be treated as a population estimate.
A single-participant run offers depth on one perspective but cannot show cross-cohort convergence.
How to Run a Custom Focus Group
Before starting, define the decision the research must support. Choose the analytical lens that best fits the question, write a precise objective, and select participants whose reasoning is relevant to the intended audience.
Walkthrough of How to Create a Custom Focus Group
Step 1: Open Custom Focus Group
From the dashboard, open Calendar → New Event → New Research Study. Select Qual** →**Focus Groups. Custom appears as the middle study type and lists an objective-based setup, 2 to 8 AI Twins, a 15 to 20 minute runtime, and outputs including a concise answer, deep analysis, and full transcripts.
Click Start Study under Custom.
Step 2: Select the Discussion Role and Probing Style
The Role & Approach screen controls the moderator lens and the way the discussion follows up. The default role is Insightful Marketer and the default probing style is Interview.
Available roles include Behavioral Psychologist, Pattern Analyst, Design Strategist, and Innovation Engineer. Create Custom Role allows the team to define a bespoke moderator perspective.
Interview is suited to structured follow-up and deeper clarification. Reflection prioritizes first-instinct responses with less moderator direction.
This setup matters because the example objective is about emotional triggers rather than general product satisfaction. A behavioral lens directs the analysis toward motives, anxiety, relief, and decision shortcuts. Reflection is useful here because the goal is to capture the participant's first interpretation of the purchase rather than guide the answer toward a more rational explanation.
Click Select Objective.
Step 3: Write the Objective
The Objective screen provides three suggested starters and a free-text field. Select a suggestion or write a custom objective.
The objective determines the generated question set. Write it as a specific research goal rather than a broad topic. The example objective focuses on uncovering the emotional triggers behind a purchase decision.
The objective narrows the study to the emotional logic behind the purchase. It does not ask which features people prefer or whether they like the product. It asks what psychological event causes the purchase to happen. That wording is what allows the report to distinguish between excitement, status, habit, physical discomfort, and preparedness.
Click Create Questions.
Step 4: Review the Generated Questions
The Questions screen generates approximately six prompts from the objective. Review the sequence to confirm that it covers triggers, recent behavior, confidence, prior experience, identity, and the role of the brand or category.
The question sequence moves from broad emotion to a recent purchase, then to confidence, prior experience, and identity. This progression is useful because it tests whether the same motive appears across several angles. In the example, relief and preparedness recur in the recent-purchase story, the discussion of confidence, and the explanation of why trusted features matter. That repetition strengthens the interpretation.
Edit questions with the pencil icon, remove them with the trash icon, request more suggestions, or add a custom question. Keep AI Driven for adaptive routing unless full coverage is required.
Click Select Twins.
Step 5: Select the AI Twins
Use the search field or Recommend to select 2 to 8 AI Twins. Each profile includes a short description that helps determine whether the participant matches the intended audience.
A focused one-participant run can provide depth on a single audience perspective. A larger cohort can reveal agreement and disagreement across different contexts.
Choose Conduct Meeting Once for a one-time study. Choose Start Meeting and Schedule for recurring research.
Step 6: Review the Conclusion
The results page opens with the Conclusion. Read the bolded terms as the central mechanisms that organize the analysis below.
The conclusion changes the expected story of the category. The purchase is not framed as a reward or a fashion event. It begins when the current product no longer protects the participant from discomfort during long workdays. Replacing it restores confidence that the person can move through the day without thinking about pain, stability, or fatigue. This is why the report describes the purchase as relief and functional preparedness.
In this example, the central reasoning is that the purchase provides relief and functional preparedness. The audience uses the product to reduce anxiety about discomfort and to feel ready for a physically demanding routine. This suggests a reliability-led message rather than a status-led one.
Step 7: Read the Detailed Analysis
Select See detailed analysis to expand the conclusion into named themes.
The first theme explains the trigger: physical discomfort signals that the current product has reached the end of its useful life. The second explains the proof: cushioning, stability, and grip convert a technical feature set into emotional security because they reduce the chance of struggling during a demanding shift. The third explains the identity requirement: the participant also wants to appear polished in professional settings, but only after the functional foundation is protected. The three themes therefore describe one hierarchy, not three unrelated preferences.
The first theme explains why discomfort triggers the purchase. The second explains how technical reliability becomes emotional confidence. The third explains how restrained aesthetics support professional identity without displacing function. Together, the themes show that the audience is seeking security, credibility, and continuity across the day.
Step 8: Review the Strategic Recommendations
The recommendations translate each theme into a practical direction for messaging, visual storytelling, and loyalty.
The messaging recommendation follows from relief and reliability. The visual recommendation focuses on moments when fatigue and reassurance are most emotionally visible. The loyalty recommendation uses the audience's history of trusted performance as the reason to stay.
Step 9: Review Responses by Individuals
The Response by Individuals section shows the source material behind the synthesis. Read the answers question by question to understand the context and language that produced the themes.
The individual responses provide the clearest evidence for the synthesis. The participant describes buying a replacement after familiar physical discomfort returns, feeling reassured when the new pair arrives, and valuing the confidence of being prepared for a demanding week. When discussing appearance, the participant appreciates a classic, polished look but immediately returns to cushioning and grip as the real source of confidence. This confirms that aesthetics support the decision, while functional security drives it.
The example responses establish a consistent hierarchy. The participant replaces the product when discomfort returns, values the confidence of being prepared, and appreciates polished design only when trusted functional features remain intact.
Step 10: Inspect Citation Traces
Select a citation marker to open Trace Results. The drawer identifies the cited text, participant context, and the connection between the source response and the synthesized claim.
The trace shows how a phrase such as being prepared for whatever the day brings becomes the basis for the broader idea of functional preparedness. It also lets the reader check that the report has not expanded the claim beyond the source. The cited language refers to readiness, comfort, and physical reliability, so the resulting recommendation should remain centered on those ideas rather than introducing unrelated themes such as prestige or trend leadership.
Use this view to verify claims used in the Conclusion, detailed themes, and recommendations. The trace should make the logic visible without requiring the stakeholder to read the full transcript.
From a Custom Objective to a Traceable Qualitative Read
A Custom Focus Group is strongest when the role, objective, questions, and cohort are chosen as one coherent research design. The role determines the lens, the objective determines the question scaffold, and the cohort determines whose reasoning shapes the result.
The final report should be read as a chain from conclusion to themes, themes to recommendations, and recommendations back to verbatim evidence. That chain is what makes the output useful for both decision-making and stakeholder review.